Monday, June 22, 2015

It’s one of the first lessons of life coaching or executive
coaching. An individual’s mood, attitude and ability to function effectively on
the job depends in good part on how he is being managed.

For a long time now, some psychologists have been selling
the idea that your problems all go back to your childhood. If you observe
reality more closely, you will discover that, regardless of how a child was
toilet trained, how well or poorly he has been managed will often have a decisive effect
on mental health.

A good manager will motivate the staff. He will instill
confidence. He will compliment you on your successes. He will never call you
out in public. He will let you do your job and will allow you to take
responsibility for how well or poorly you perform. He will make you feel better and to perform more effectively

Among the skills that define a good manager are courtesy,
respect, politeness and civility.

A rude manager is a bad manager. A manager who fails to show
respect to his staff will demoralize them. A manager who likes to push people
around, to tell them what to do, to berate them for their failures… will not
have a very well-motivated staff. In the worst cases, he will make his staff
sick.

Unfortunately, the message, one that I among others have
been trumpeting for years, has not penetrated the minds of many American
managers. Apparently, they have becoming more, not less rude.

Rudeness
and bad behavior have all grown over the last decades, particularly at work.
For nearly 20 years I’ve been studying, consulting and collaborating with
organizations around the world to learn more about the costs of this
incivility. How we treat one another at work matters. Insensitive
interactions have a way of whittling away at people’s health, performance and
souls.

Robert
M. Sapolsky, a Stanford professor and the author of “Why Zebras Don’t Get
Ulcers,” argues that when people experience intermittent stressors like
incivility for too long or too often, their immune systems pay the price. We
also may experience major health problems, including cardiovascular disease,
cancer, diabetes and ulcers.

Of course, it’s not going to be solved by forcing everyone
to suffer through another round of sensitivity training. You would do better to pick
up a copy of Miss Manners and learning some basic etiquette. Not because she
has a great deal to say about how to manage people, but because she teaches you
the basic principles of etiquette. If that does not feel sufficiently serious,
you must know that a young George Washington wrote a book about etiquette. Some
have suggested that he was just copying what he had read elsewhere, but the
book does have value.

Of course, you want to know the different ways that managers
behave rudely. Porath has the answer:

Bosses
produce demoralized employees through a string of actions: walking away from a
conversation because they lose interest; answering calls in the middle of
meetings without leaving the room; openly mocking people by pointing out their
flaws or personality quirks in front of others; reminding their subordinates of
their “role” in the organization and “title”; taking credit for wins, but
pointing the finger at others when problems arise. Employees who are harmed by
this behavior, instead of sharing ideas or asking for help, hold back.

Porath and her colleagues have found a way to calculate the
cost of all the rudeness:

INCIVILITY
also hijacks workplace focus. According to a survey of more than 4,500 doctors,
nurses and other hospital personnel, 71 percent tied disruptive behavior, such
as abusive, condescending or insulting personal conduct, to medical errors, and
27 percent tied such behavior to patient deaths.

My studies with
Amir Erez, a management professor at the University of Florida, show that
people working in an environment characterized by incivility miss information
that is right in front of them. They are no longer able to process it as well
or as efficiently as they would otherwise.

Why are managers loath to be nice to the staff? Apparently,
the equate niceness with weakness:

Many
are skeptical about the returns of civility. A quarter believe that they will
be less leader-like, and nearly 40 percent are afraid that they’ll be taken
advantage of if they are nice at work. Nearly half think that it is better to
flex one’s muscles to garner power. They are jockeying for position in a
competitive workplace and don’t want to put themselves at a disadvantage.

One suspects that male and female leaders cannot exhibit
civil behavior in the same way. Since there is a greater chance that a female
manager will be perceived to be weak, she will be more likely to avoid gestures
that denote weakness and perhaps make too much of an effort to appear to be
strong.

Happily enough, Porath emphasizes the importance of how
others see us, what cues they give us when we interact with them. Therapy
notwithstanding, it’s not about how you feel about yourself. It’s about how
others see you:

Why is
respect — or lack of it — so potent? Charles Horton Cooley’s 1902 notion of the
“looking glass self” explains that we use others’ expressions (smiles),
behaviors (acknowledging us) and reactions (listening to us or insulting us) to
define ourselves. How we believe others see us shapes who we are. We ride a wave
of pride or get swallowed in a sea of embarrassment based on brief interactions
that signal respect or disrespect. Individuals feel valued and powerful when
respected. Civility lifts people. Incivility holds people down. It makes people
feel small.

How can a manager overcome rudeness and show respect for
staff?

Porath suggests:

Making
small adjustments such as listening, smiling, sharing and thanking others more
often can have a huge impact. In one unpublished experiment I conducted, a
smile and simple thanks (as compared with not doing this) resulted in people
being viewed as 27 percent warmer, 13 percent more competent and 22 percent
more civil.

4 comments:

My own experience is that rudeness comes from a personalized view of the managerial role -- that it is a status rather than a commitment. Does the manager believe he has authority, or that he is being if service?

I am constantly amazed at how many people talk about all the people who work "under" them. It's a focus on authority, with an authoritarian focus. When one seeks to serve, the authority he wields will occur differently for people... it is to serve the team and company, not his own self-aggrandizement.

This is also true of an overall creative understanding of responsibility... that one is the source of possibility by choosing to be responsible rather than being a victim. A victim views authority as a scarce commodity, which is to be protected and defended. The responsible manager seeks to serve, which is an abundant resource that is created by his way of being.

This may sound esoteric, but it's really about the source and purpose of one's power. Is it for self, others, or both? Scientific management, as practiced by most top U.S. business schools, views people as objects. Leadership appeals to higher realms of the human person, perhaps even the soul. Viewing people as statistics will not provide access to the extraordinary results top leaders produce in a variety of environments or situations.

Coaching and executive development, practiced by true professionals, can support this, but the same distinction of authority vs. service applies.

In my early twenties I took a night school course on Management Communications. The professor asked, "What one word best describes the nature of memory?" He went around the room, so I got to hear all the answers he rejected. When he turned to me at last I said, "association." This is the word he wanted to hear.

Years later I read an article by a psychologist discussing ideas attributed to Sigmund Freud, but lacking a specific reference to his publications. If it exists I never did stumble upon the original source. Anyway this author said Freud described how a child forms associations between money, feces, and social obligations during the period when it also experiences toilet training. This also the phallic period because ideas that later form about sex and money have earlier associations. So, for example, a child thinks the father must bring money to please the mother just as he or she is encouraged to make on the toilet and do other socially required things to please the mother. Meanwhile the father, mother, or other adults may express significant personal displeasure or displeasure with the child.

No one can escape the emotions induced by social patterns in early childhood. He or she can only pretend to do so by adopting a role rather than forming actual cordial relationships with others. This is why I hate Doctor Phil, his role of helper on TV could not provide a child with actual cognitive development needs, so a person who really wants to change the world for each individual should not make too much of the role he or she plays in adult life or on TV. Instead he or she should attempt to isolate and describe the real needs of young children which do not include an appetite to make money unless formed via association with the roles of adults. We do want to have some power over our own actions and the actions of others, which is natural, and deprivations cause us to want even more power over others, which one does not have as a child when one's needs are not met.